State minister Simsek attends G-20 meeting

State Minister Mehmet Simsek is currently in Washington for talks and meetings with officials of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Simsek represented Turkey on Saturday at a meeting of the G-20, the group of nations with the largest economies in the world, held as part of the annual meetings of the IMF and WB on how to fight the ongoing global financial crisis. Addressing the gathering, he promoted the Turkish Central Bank's recent initiative to increase liquidity flow in inter-bank transactions to ease the crisis. Under this measure, the bank began to buy foreign currency from banks holding excess foreign currency and sell it to banks in shortage. In related news, next year's annual meetings of the IMF and WB are scheduled to be held on Oct. 6-7 in Istanbul.